What makes one tweet more interesting than another? Surprisingly, it’s not necessarily the topic. Here’s what Tammy Erickson of the Harvard Business Review has to say about how we should tweet:
Don’t report banal details. Unless you’re observing a true breaking news event (and note: this does not include what you or your child ate for lunch), skip it.
Do interpret your experiences. How do they make you feel? What do they mean to you?
Do share the oddities you observe. Look for things that seem unusual, out-of-place, surprising.
Do share things you love – quotes, phrases, descriptions of events that brought joy to your day.
Web design and web development are two entirely different things, although a person may be skilled at both. In my experience, though, web designers tend to think more like traditional artists (more free-flowing and “inspired” thoughts), and web developers tend to think more like traditional engineers (more structured and “logical” thoughts). While I think engineers should be able to design, and designers should be able to engineer, it’s not often that I come across someone who is really great at both.
What got me thinking about this? Well, in my recent search for good WordPress themes, I found some that I generally liked, but was unhappy with the way lists and blockquotes were formatted: the list bullets and quotation marks hung outside the visual line created by the left edge of the text. This is called hanging punctuation, and creates a strong optical alignment that is pleasing to the eye, but de-emphasizes the quote or bulleted text because your eye flows over it so naturally along with the edge of the rest of the text.
Your eye will be drawn to this text because it’s not flush with the edge of the rest of the article.
At first (not having been trained in typography) I thought this hanging punctuation must be the result of engineers who did not understand good design. But then I came across Kevin Tamura’s article: Thoughts on Hanging Bullets. Hanging bullets and other punctuation is proper design for traditional (print) typography. But the Internet has changed things. Those of us who have grown up using the Internet have learned to scan pages rather than read them. We quickly look for the things that stand out most, citing those as the most important elements on the page, and ignore the body copy unless we are interested enough in the elements that stand out.
You are much more likely to read this bullet point than the preceding or following paragraphs.
By not hanging your punctuation, you create a more scannable (not readable) page by creating contrast for these bulleted lists and pull quotes. This can pique a reader’s interest faster and encourage them to read the rest of the text.
Let’s be honest; there were two thoughts we all had at the end of the iPad unveiling:
“I can’t get over how much it sounds like a feminine hygiene product!” and
“It’s really just a big iPod Touch…”
I can’t help you with the first thought, but let’s talk about the second.
Is the iPad really just a big iPod Touch?
Yes. But that’s really not a bad thing like many people are making it out to be. The iPhone and iPod Touch have been phenomenally successful, with hundreds of thousands of applications in dozens of genres that will run on the new iPad as soon as it’s shipped. Find me another platform that has launched with that kind of support and momentum.
Also, the iPad isn’t priced that much higher than either of its ancestors, and is comparable in cost with netbooks and competing e-readers. What’s that? The iPad only costs about as much as a device that only lets me read books? That’s right! And you can do all of these other great things on your iPad:
Play games
Surf the web
Listen to music
Watch movies
Write documents and presentations
Just about anything else* that can be done on a netbook, laptop, or desktop computer
For those of you who are more visual, here’s a very telling infographic comparing the iPad to six other e-readers. Maybe that will sway you a bit. What do you say? Take this quick poll:
AppleInsider has posted photos from Mission:Repair showing replacement iPad enclosures with a slot for a forward-facing camera: iPad photos show slot for forward-facing video camera. Could your video conferencing dreams come true after all? My bet is that we’ll see a camera in the second generation iPad, along with software updates including iChat and perhaps facial recognition.